This talk examines a site where gender expectations entangle with ablebodied supremacy: childhood development narratives. In her recent book, The Disabled Child, Amanda Apgar argues that narratives about raising children with disabilities bring into relief the social constructions of childhood and adulthood. Rather than biological life stages, childhood and adulthood are relational concepts that depend on and reproduce ability and disability in and through gender, race, and class.
Gender and Justice Speaker Series
The 2022-2023 Gender and Justice Speaker Series seeks to elevate those whose voices are urgently needed to help us consider our role in shaping family and community in our personal and political lives. This series provides space for scholars who think critically about bodily autonomy, relationships, and interconnectedness while promoting equity and justice in volatile political terrains. Our dialogues are aimed at acknowledging intersectional differences within kinship relations and working toward inclusive and radical affective care.
Growing Up Straight: Narratives of Childhood, Disabilities, and Hetero Futures
All in the Family: Marxists and Feminists in Twentieth Century Japan
Yamakawa Kikue (1890-1980) is best known as one of the earliest developers of Marxist feminist thought in Japan, and she is frequently discussed in histories of the development of Japanese feminism. But she is seldom discussed in treatments of Japanese Marxism or the Japanese left. This paper will examine her work engaging with the broader male-dominated socialist and communist movement(s) and will argue that we cannot read her properly as an originator of Marxist feminism without understanding her position within and against that male-dominated left, and the familial relations that conditioned that position for her and so many other leftist women.
Join us May 3rd at 11:45am-1pm in Robertson Hall 100 (WGS Library).
